Girls Not Grey
by Seph Meadowes
Summary: Rosemarie Hathaway will die in exactly 28 days, 16 hours, 14 minutes and 2 seconds. Adrian/Rose.


**Title: Girls Not Grey**

**Author: Seph Meadowes**

**Fandom: Books - Vampire Academy**

**Rating: T**

**Warning/s: Character death, angst, suicide, mentions of drinking and drug abuse**

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Rosemarie Hathaway will die in exactly 28 days, 16 hours, 14 minutes and 2 seconds.

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**Day 1 (27 days, 15 hours, 13 minutes and 1 second)**

Rose doesn't do anything anymore except lie on her bed and cry. Sometimes she stares at the ceiling, eyes unseeing her mind in a faraway place Adrian can't reach. And then there are times when she screams, loud wails that shake the walls as she trashes about on the bed, tearing bed sheets and punching pillows.

Adrian prefers the latter because that's when Rose seemed even the slightest semblance of alive. She would scream and sob like a wounded animal and he would hold her to him as she retaliated with hitting and cursing him until she gets tired and breaks down.

He doesn't like to see her cry but he'd take this over the mind-numbing silence.

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**Day 20 (8 days, 16 hours, 14 minutes and 2 seconds)**

The gravestone is smooth polished black marble and Rose's tanned calloused fingers trace the golden curvy inscription on it aimlessly.

_Vasilissa Dragonmir_

Adrian feels his own heartache at the thought of his cousin. Sweet, gentle, flawed Lissa, the broken angel in a God-forsaken earth.

"I miss her Adrian." Rose murmurs almost inaudibly.

He sighs. "I miss her too."

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**Day 3 (25 days, 13 hours and 1 minute)**

Christian leaves school to live with Tasha back in their apartment in New York. No one hears from him for precisely five days but nobody seems to care except for Adrian and Jill who asks him for daily for any news about her former mentor.

Rose doesn't notice a thing, too wrapped up in her own thoughts and grief but sometimes she'd look around the room as if looking for something before relapsing into her catatonic state.

He's having his third glass of scotch and watching _Donnie Darco _on HBO when the call comes. He stares at the screen of his blackberry for three seconds before he leaves for Rose's room, scotch glass still in hand.

Rose is lying on the bed on her side facing the bare wall. Adrian presses answer and puts the phone to her ear. There's a small "hello" and Rose makes a sound at the back of her throat that he doesn't know if it's out of displeasure or not but she takes the phone from him anyway and listens to Christian talk for exactly two hours.

She doesn't utter a single word.

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**Day 22 (6 days, 4 hours and 2 minutes)**

Christian dies of an overdose in his apartment one night. Adrian hears the news from a distraught Tasha who calls him precisely three days after the incident.

He's eating dinner out with Rose that evening at a swanky Italian restaurant, him in an Armani suit and Rose in a red v-neck dress that distracts him a little too much. He's on his second glass of wine when he gets the call.

Rose's face is blank when he tells her, the almost happy smile on her face dropping in an instant. She keeps quiet the rest of the night, her face emotionless, the walls up again.

He doesn't try to draw her out and they spend the car ride in silence, Rose's hand on her phone, waiting for a call that would never come.

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**Day 5 (23 days and 1 hour)**

Adrian cries for Lissa only once. It never really gets to sink in because he always keeps himself busy with taking care of Rose, drinking, Rose, smoking, Rose...

He does everything to delay the impact of the realization because his favorite cousin, his surrogate sister, is gone and she's never coming back.

He's in Rose's room when it happens, Rose is lying asleep on her bed, as usual as these days, and he's mindlessly riffling through one of her old textbooks. There's a light tapping sound across the room and he looks up to see a small bird on the windowsill. He expects to see Lissa rushing towards it right then to let it in to see if it was hurt, hungry or tired…

Then he realizes she won't.

It's one of the saddest truths there is. That realization when we see that we can only live in denial for so long until reality finally catches up and ruins us, destroying our foundations, turning everything wretched because there's nothing left but rubble and disappointments.

He goes into a fit of rage, throwing things around, shouting, crying because Lissa's dead and it's _unfair._ So unfair because she didn't do anything wrong and the universe has to fuck up everything and with everyone. It feels like he's trapped in a nightmare where the voices he tries so hard to keep at bay finally break in and they taunt and laugh at him as it starts to all close in until he can't breathe.

A sharp slap to his cheek brings him back and he stares at Rose, sanity and fire in her eyes again.

"Wake up, Adrian."

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**Day 28 **

He arrives after dinner to find Rose lying on her bathroom floor, her wrists slit and the blood pools at his feet. The shock keeps him numb and he's frozen as he stares at the horrors before him. Rose is face down on the white tile, lying on a pool of her own blood, her skin, hair and clothes all soaked red.

He stares at her corpse for what feels like a lifetime before he crouches down and cradles her to him. He feels for a pulse that's not there but she's still so warm and it feels like she's alive even when no breath enters her lungs.

He starts to cry and pulls her tighter and tries to concentrate, praying to a God he doesn't believe in that it'll work with him what Lissa once did. He wasn't as powerful as his cousin but please, he prayed, _please_.

A heartbeat or two passed and he sighs in relief at Rose's beautiful brown eyes.

"Why?" She croaks out in a sob.

He's out of breath for some reason and the air tastes sweet as he inhales. "You needed to wake up." She starts to cry and he holds her, feeling so exhausted and weary but nonetheless happy.

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**My first Vampire Academy fic. It was requested by my best friend, Allyssa. Forgive me for my insanity, mushiness and errors. I'm only human.**


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